My all-time favorite quote about writing is this one:

"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of,
but do it in private and wash your hands afterward."
-Robert A. Heinlein

I think that this quote applies to bloggers in a very significant way. If you are a writer who writes essays or how-to books or smut novels or technical manuals or epic poems-whatever it is that you do-and somebody thinks enough of your writing to occasionally pay you for it, then when introducing yourself at a party, you might say, "Hi, my name is so-and-so, and I am a writer."

I write every day-sometimes at work, and sometimes at play. I write miles and miles and miles of words. And then I edit and cut half of it out and take the paragraph that I liked so well from the bottom and put it at the top, remove the top paragraph all-together because it kind of sucked and I was just throwing down some words off the top of my head anyway, and now that I removed the bottom, I have to come up with a new way to wrap things up, and since I changed the beginning I now have to check and make sure that the middle of it still flows right, and blah, blah, blah and on and on, and I continue to chip away until the huge block of granite with which I started begins to look like something I wouldn't mind giving away to some random friend who happens to have a nice spot in their garden for it. ("Here, I made you this cool granite bust of Jerry Orbach-would you like me to carry it to your car for you?")

Writing a short essay, or in my case, a flurry of ideas that could become an essay, doesn't take long, by my standards-an evening, perhaps?. The editing can take longer, depending on whether or not I am actually trying. Why have such a time-sucking, painstaking, pain-in-the-ass "hobby"? As Richard Krzemien said about writing, "It's tougher than Himalayan yak jerky in January. But, as any creative person will tell you, there are days when there's absolutely nothing sweeter than creating something from nothing."

And you all know that I am a big fan of that magic show.

But I'm no writer.

I'm not a writer, that is, until that moment in which I say, "screw it," and proclaim MYSELF a writer, since nobody else is going to do it, what with me being a blogger and all.

But I am.

Of course, after my declaration, I immediately feel the need to qualify that remark and defend the whole "it's just a blog" response by reminding people that I just spent my work-day, where actual money changed

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